Abstract
In this paper, we study the effect of stochastic fluctuations in payoffs for two strategies, cooperation and defection, used in random pairwise interactions in a population of fixed finite size with an update according to a Moran model. We assume that the means, variances and covariances of the payoffs are of the same small order while all higher-order moments are negligible. We show that more variability in the payoffs to defection and less variability in the payoffs to cooperation contribute to the evolutionary success of cooperation over defection as measured by fixation probabilities under weak selection. This conclusion is drawn by comparing the probabilities of ultimate fixation of cooperation and defection as single mutants to each other and to what they would be under neutrality. These comparisons are examined in detail with respect to the population size and the second moments of the payoffs in five cases of additive Prisoner’s Dilemmas. The analysis is extended to a Prisoner’s Dilemma repeated a random number of times with Tit-for-Tat starting with cooperation and Always-Defect as strategies. Moreover, simulations with an update according to a Wright–Fisher model suggest that the conclusions are robust.
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Acknowledgements
D. Kroumi was supported by the Deanship of Scientific Research (DSR) at King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals (KFUPM) through Project No. SR181014. É. Martin and S. Lessard were supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (Undergraduate Student Research Award and Discovery Grant No. 8833, respectively). We thank three anonymous referees for helpful comments to improve the paper.
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Research is supported in part by the Deanship of Scientific Research (DSR) at King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals (KFUPM) and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.
Appendices
Appendix A: A First-Order Approximation
Note that \(|\eta _i|<M\), for \(i=1,2,3,4\), which yields \(|\bar{P}(x)|\le M<1\) for any x in [0, 1]. Using Taylor’s theorem, we obtain
where \(\xi \) is a random variable that depends on \(\bar{P}(x)\) such that \(\xi \in (0,\bar{P}(x))\) if \(\bar{P}(x)>0\) or \(\xi \in (\bar{P}(x),0)\) if \(\bar{P}(x)<0\). This leads to
If \(\bar{P}(x)>0\), we have \(1\le 1+\xi \le 1+\bar{P}(x)\), which leads to
If \(\bar{P}(x)<0\), we have \(0<1+\bar{P}(x)\le 1+\xi \le 1\), which leads to
since \(|\bar{P}(x)|\le M<1\). Combining these inequalities, we get
where K is a finite constant. Then, we have
On the other hand, by using condition (3), we have
We conclude that
Appendix B: Calculation of Summations
Using the elementary arithmetic identities
we get
and
Appendix C: Simulation Data
This appendix contains the simulation data in Cases 1 and 2 under a Moran model (Figs. 9, 10) and a Wright–Fisher model (Figs. 11, 12). For a population size going from 2 to 20 and parameter values \(\delta =0.02\), \(\mu _b=2\) and \(\mu _c=1\), the fixation probabilities \(F_C\) and \(F_D\) are calculated from \(10^6\) repeated runs for each value of the scaled variance \(\sigma ^2\) in a uniform probability distribution.
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Kroumi, D., Martin, É., Li, C. et al. Effect of Variability in Payoffs on Conditions for the Evolution of Cooperation in a Small Population. Dyn Games Appl 11, 803–834 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13235-021-00383-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13235-021-00383-2